Playground Anonymous

I hear some weird things on the playground. They come from parents most of the time. Kids are pretty boring, actually...

Grandpa pushes young granddaughter on the swing while "keeping an eye on" the older one. He calls over to her:

"Jennifer, swing. Swing, Jennifer!"

She has never not been swinging.

"Hold on, Jennifer. JENNIFER HOLD ON! JENNIFER!! You hold on now."

She has never let go of the swing the entire time.

"JENNIFER. Just swing and hold on. Jennifer..."

She is swinging like a champ all by herself. She seems to have tuned Grandpa out. Grandpa gets the message:

"Jennifer, got off the swing. GET OFF THE SWING JENNIFER. Go take a break. GET SOME WATER AND TAKE. A. BREAK, JENNIFER!"

Jennifer sighs and gets off the swing. She goes over to the bench, takes out her water bottle and sips casually. Grandpa is still pushing the younger granddaughter rather forcefully as he glares at Jennifer. After a loaded pause, he can't take it anymore:

"Jennifer, relax. RELAX! Drink you water and sit back. Drink your water and sit back. TAKE A BREAK JENNIFER."

He then turns to me and confidentially says:

"Sorry about that, guy. You know, you just gotta INSTILL it in them, or..."

I smile knowingly and mumble something about how I hear that, boy howdy. I continue pushing my sunny, giggly kid on the swing and silently make a vow not to try to "instill" anything in her for the rest of the day, at least.

Anyone checked in on Skynet lately?

I recently downloaded a virus-scanning app to my phone the other day. It works pretty well, except that it's ad-supported which sometimes makes for a confusing narrative.

Case in point, last time I ran a virus scan:

"Your phone is very clean."

read the screen as usual, followed by a green-checked list of clean files. However, the small banner ad at the bottom (for life insurance?) was made up of a single, jarring sentence:

"When will you die?"

Taken together as two sentences (excluding the bullet-list), I was looking at the beginning of a very odd, existential conversation that I couldn't resolve for the better part of the day.

I'm still having trouble not thinking my phone has it out for me.